Introduction to shooting natural light and artificial light

Lead: When shooting, the usage of natural light and artificial light is still different. Let's take a look at the shooting strategies of natural light and artificial light.

1 Balance skin color

If the subject's skin is shallow, natural light is the best choice. Light-colored skin reflects light more strongly and will make facial details that you don't want to do disappear. On the contrary, for subjects with dark skin, appropriate flash fill light is a good choice. In addition, under the background of the sky or windows, the flash fill light can also effectively highlight the five senses of the subject.

When shooting a subject with dark skin color, the supplementary light reflected by the reflector can also achieve interesting effects, enhance the contrast and give the photo a more comprehensive tone performance.

2. We have run out of photos

When taking a single photo, flashing the flash directly at the subject will make the photo very flat, but it works well when taking a big group photo. In the case of a large number of people being photographed, it may not be possible to take care of everyone in the picture by using the flash to reflect the fill light. Flash directly at the subject with a flash to ensure that everyone is fully illuminated.

Use natural light like a flash.

Under natural conditions, we can also find a lot of light with a strong sense of direction, similar to the effect of a film studio. For example, sunlight sprinkled through gaps in leaves or scattered light injected through indoor curtains and windows will leave a long shadow behind the subject.

Such details can add unusual details to our portrait photography, thus making it eye-catching. However, in this case, you may need to use a flash to fill the light to avoid overexposure of the highlights of the picture.

This is the most commonly used technique in backlight photography. Even if the camera automatic exposure system is affected by bright backlight, it can still ensure the facial details of people, and the background will not be overexposed and lose details.

4 processing mixed light

Swing between natural light and artificial light? Sometimes mixing two kinds of light can bring a warm atmosphere to the picture. Windows that let the model stand by while retaining the background of indoor lighting. The mixture of incandescent lamp and natural light can illuminate the model and make the whole picture full of golden light.

5 Use Hou Lian to add animation synchronously.

When Hou Lian synchronization is turned on, the flash will flash at the last moment before the shutter closes, solidifying the dynamics at the end of exposure. The use of Hou Lian synchronization can bring new ideas to our portrait photography, and enhance the motion of the picture through the fuzzy motion trajectory, which is especially suitable for shooting children.

6 flexible use of flash

Off-camera flash can bring more creative effects, darkening the background, and highlighting the subject is one of them. Putting the flash in front of the subject side to directly illuminate the subject can darken the surrounding environment. When the angle is 45 degrees, the effect is most natural, which can bring beautiful and soft shadow effect to the face on the backlight side. If the flash and the camera are in the same position, the obtained light effect lacks this stereoscopic effect.

7 avoid ugly highlights

There is no doubt that the factors that can be controlled by shooting in natural light are quite limited. The sunshine suddenly emerged from the white clouds is as annoying as the sudden rainstorm on a sunny day. If the highlights in the background interfere with your picture or exposure, you can adjust the position of the model or yourself to make them not appear in the picture. If this doesn't work, you can shoot close to the model with a telephoto lens and a large aperture to blur the overexposed background.

8 Use a mirror

The reflector is one of the most important equipment for portrait photographers, and it is very important to achieve uniform exposure. It is also a good helper for interaction. Having a participant stand on the photographer's backlight side with a reflector can encourage them to actively participate in the shooting process. If you don't have reflectors, beaches, snow, water and so on. It can also be a natural reflector to illuminate the subject from below. But remember, the smoother the surface, the harder it is to reflect light. The color of the reflected light depends on the color of the reflecting surface, for example, the reflection of the beach has a warm yellow tone.

Because of this, a pure white reflector suitable for all kinds of photos is still essential. You can buy reflectors of different sizes in Taobao or the local photographic equipment store, and the price will not be too high.

9 Use the built-in pop-up flash

The overhead flash is very suitable for shooting when the photographer and the subject are in motion. When taking pictures in the Woods or on the beach, wear a wide-angle lens to run with the subject, and at the same time use the camera to capture from a low angle. The overhead flash can clearly solidify the subject in this unusual scene. This trick is perfect for children.

10 Reduce power consumption

When shooting outdoors, control the output power of the flash at a low value. Because when you turn on the flash in strong sunlight and want to blur the background with a large aperture, the picture is easily overexposed. Reducing the output power of the flash can make the aperture larger, make the effect more natural and keep more shadow details.